The Hygiene of Life

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In order to maintain life, man needs three vitally important things: light, life and love.

Light reveals the physical world and helps us to understand life. If a man does not understand the laws of light, he cannot understand the laws of life. If he does not understand life, he cannot understand the laws of love.

If a man does not understand the laws of light, of life and of love, inner contradictions will arise and will create an external dissonance.

In the organic world, light is connected with the food which man consumes. Without light and warmth no food may be produced. Consequently, the human stomach is completely dependent on light and warmth. Food is necessary for the provision of those elements by means of which life manifests itself.

Today all people, all living creatures, big and small, strive towards happiness and security. This striving exists in families, in societies and among peoples. What I am asking is this; who succeeds in this aspiration? It is the more sensible families, societies and peoples, those who understand the laws of light, life and love, who are able to some extent to organise themselves so that they can live comfortably. The remainder, who do not understand these laws, resort to superstition and achieve nothing. Why does this happen? It is because they seek happiness in the beginning of their lives, at the beginning of each undertaking, when in fact happiness lies in the end result of life.

All modern people desire to grow, to become richer, to become educated, strong, or, in other words, to achieve happiness. Consequently, if happiness is the aim of life, then everyone should try to learn the ways in which happiness may be achieved. Without happiness life has no external means of expression.

The expression of happiness on earth is health. The most important thing for man is health — man must be healthy! However, health depends on the physiological relationships between the organs of the human body.

If the interaction between brain, lungs and stomach is correct, then man’s health is good. These three organs comprise three great worlds. Many confuse a man’s belly with his stomach and say that we should not eat a lot. The belly and the stomach are two entirely different things. The stomach is a world entirely independent of the other. In the stomach there are ten million working cells which deal with digestion. If each ‘worker’ were paid only one lev per day, we would each have to pay a total often million levs per day for digestion. This shows what a colossal task these cells perform. And after all that, people do not value life. Why? Because they do not even suspect just how many beings work for them free of charge and how much energy is expended by nature for the maintenance of life.

Contemporary man, rulers, scholars and philosophers, are all occupied with one abstract idea — to imbue life with legality, justice and happiness without comprehending the laws of happiness. In spite of people’s aspirations, ideal families, societies or states are to be found almost nowhere. This is due to the fact that there is no harmony, no correct correlations between the three worlds, the physical, emotional and mental.

For example, if the light which shines into the eyes is very bright, the pupils immediately contract because they cannot bear such a bright light. Otherwise, great harm will be done to the eyes. If on the other hand the light is very dim, the pupils dilate like owls’ eyes in order to take in more light. However, this exceptional dilation creates another defect. The pupils of human eyes should not be excessively dilated nor should they be excessively small.

People whose pupils are dilated understand life in terms of darkness. Those whose pupils are contracted see life in terms of daylight. These two types of person are entirely different, and they can have nothing whatsoever in common.

What can be born in the hours of night? Corn does not grow and fruits do not ripen. The night was intended only for rest. True life, true growth and ripening take place during the day. During the hours of night the materials the body has absorbed during the day are processed.

I say that night represents life’s sufferings and day its joys.

You ask why sorrow and suffering exist. There is a certain correlation between suffering and joy. Sorrow and suffering are necessary for man to rest and joy for him to work.

Sorrow and joy do not exist outside of life, nor can they be divorced from life. If you divorce sorrows and joys from life, then the latter will become devoid of sense. And there is no greater suffering for man than for his life to lose its sense. It is only thus that man realises that suffering and joy have their place in life.

However, if suffering and joy cannot be made use of correctly, then they have not played their part. He who has not made use of joys and sufferings is like a blind man and cannot see the good things that are passing in front of him. For example, we meet a person who possesses great material wealth, expressed in money, who lives in constant fear of his money being taken from him, that he will somehow lose it and become poor. I say: what does this man gain from his life, what joy does it bring him? None at all. This man lives in suffering, in fear that he will lose his happiness. Consequently, this man’s happiness or prosperity brings him more suffering than joy.

When does a person’s prosperity cause him suffering and not joy? When the people around him want to become rich without working.

The unhappiness of modern man lies in the fact that few people like to work. Everybody wants to work as little as possible. I can understand that. Excessive work is senseless. We were not born in order to become slaves to work. It is the human desire to become rich, to achieve security, that underlies excessive labour.

Heavy labour must be replaced by sensible work, and sensible work can only exist when people have at least one thing in common. Thus, when people have at least one thing in common, they will be able to create a sensible link between light, life and love.

Light represents a sum of the awareness of all living creatures, from the tiniest to the biggest, including man.

Life represents the internal aspect of life as a whole. This shows that between all living beings there is a point in common — namely, they are all living; so in the life of each one there is a common factor. However, the life of man is distinguished from that of other creatures by its wisdom. In this sense only man is alive. Wisdom, or perception, is the most precious thing in human life. The word life’ includes wisdom. Where there is wisdom, there is life. If wisdom exists, even if it is weakly manifested, there is also life.

The forces which maintain life as a whole emanate from the three main elements in it — from light, life and love. The same thing could to a certain extent be said of man. He can draw the energy for the maintenance of his body directly from light if he knows its laws. From life if he understands it, from love if he aspires to it. These are the three sources from which man can draw strength, life and health. If he has these three things within himself, he has achieved true happiness on earth.

I say that, whatever a person may be like, however good he may be, if he does not understand the laws of light, he will not have a correct grasp of the world and will view it as one would view an exhibition of paintings. However, there are rules and methods by which one may enjoy the benefits of light.

Sometimes a person’s indisposition is due to a number of abnormal combinations caused by the incorrect perception of light. Or, to put it in scientific terms because light is stored differently in different kinds of food, in consequence some of these have a beneficial effect and some have a negative affect on the human body. As a result, the foods which man consumes represent light stored in various organs in different ways. Thus, each person who wants to be healthy must consume foods that suit his body. This is where the true hygiene of life lies.

Thus, the hygiene of life must start with the correct use of light stared in plants awl fruits. If the light absorbed cannot be turned into living energy, we say that the food has not been properly assimilated — that is, that there is no interrelation between the food and the body in question.

As far as the choice of food is concerned, nature has given man an instinct in this respect. If man returns to his primitive state of purity, then he will reach the state of being able to understand which foods are good for him and suit him best.

If we surrender ourselves to nature, she will lead us, she will make the correct decisions — and not only in terms of food. She will know with certainty what kind of a life we should lead, how we should live. Ever since man strayed from the true path he has forgotten what he was taught at the very beginning and is now relearning it again. However, unanimity is lacking and people often ask themselves who will teach them, who will show them the way. They forget that they have been ‘programmed’ with this knowledge, that they can easily renew it. When will this happen? When they return to the road they originally set out on, the road to a life of purity.

All people say that God is love, but they do not know that God’s love relates to them. However, if people manifest God’s love properly in their lives, they will lay the foundations of a sensible way of life. A sensible life is a life of immortality, a life without suffering and grief. Without God’s love you will have a life full of suffering and limitatwns. But man was not born m order to suffer. He was born in order to learn to develop properly.

Now, bearing in mind the three important things — life, light and love — we will encounter three categories of person. The first type devote themselves exclusively to life, they wish to study it in the minutest detail and in consequence they go to extremes. The religious, on the other hand, neglected physical life, they neglected light, as a consequence of which they lived in the wilderness, in monasteries; but even in this way they were unable to find the sense of life. They have denied physical life in favour of spiritual life. The third category have fallen into deep mysticism with the one and only aim of knowing love, but even in this way they have not found the sense of life. That, too, is an extreme.

The path of the mystic is not a bad one, but he must transmit his mystical state to people who do not have his experience.

In order to understand the sense of life and to be useful to oneself and to others one must begin with the physical and with light and move gradually towards the spiritual and the world of God. He who understands life correctly must study the three worlds as well.

The light in which we live is not an arbitrary thing. It represents a source of goodness which we must use. If we can process physical energy into spiritual energy and carry it over into the world of the spirit, this implies the transfer of material wealth into the world of the spirit.

Consequently, people must study the laws of life, of light and of love and apply them if they want to be happy. Knowing the laws is not enough: they must also be applied.

Many folk say: It is written that the field should be deeply ploughed.’ However, they do not plough it in this way. It is written that the field should be sown with good seed, but they do not sow it with good seed. It is written that one should do good, but they do not do good — and after all this they expect good results. Knowledge which cannot be applied in life will yield no results.

I ask this: if a man cannot imbue his mind with the most exalted thoughts, his heart with the noblest feelings and his will with the most decent actions, how will he express his life? If he cannot give expression to his life through his thoughts, feelings and actions, however much he talks about life, light and love, he will not reap the benefit of anything.

True feats are achieved only when man enters into contact with life, light and love. Moreover, this contact must not be once only: it should take place many times.

When he is born, man enters into contact with life, but in order not to lose contact he must constantly renew it. In the same way he must constantly renew his contact with light and love.

Contact with love can only be maintained by thinking about God. Contact with life can be maintained by loving people. He who does not love people cannot have life. Contact with light is maintained with love for physical life. He who does not love physical life cannot have any relationship with light. The most important and exalted things in physical life are light and warmth, and for this reason we should love this life as a whole. Consequently, without light and love we cannot understand the relationships, structure and manifestations of life as a whole. Since we do not comprehend life and love we will not understand.

Love represents the world of God, upon which all the other worlds are built. The mistake of the people of today lies in the fact that they separate God from love, that is, from the world on which everything is built. God does not exist outside of love. Outside of love we cannot recognise God. Consequently, love is the exalted, ideological side of life. Man should turn his attention to love, for love is also the light of his life.

2 August 1931 — The Seven Rila Lakes

Thus, if we understand life’ in the narrow sense of the word and neglect light, we will be dead as far as light is concerned. If, on the other hand, we understand only love, then we will become totally absorbed in it and will neglect the manifestations of life. This also holds true for one’s private life. But man’s awareness can also encompass life, light and love at the same time, that is, the physical, spiritual and divine life. If a person ignores light in physical life, his stomach will grow weaker and thus his body will become weaker. If he ignores life, his lungs will grow weak. If he ignores love, his brain will grow weaker. This is because, when the laws of light are broken, the stomach suffers. When the laws of life are broken, the lungs suffer. When the laws of love are broken, the brain and the head suffer.

The sentence ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’ can be rendered as ‘I am light, life and love’ The way represents physical life. Life represents man, and moreover life is manifested only in the truth, in wisdom and in love. This is what Christ meant with the words ‘I am the good shepherd. ‘ Consequently, a person can be a good shepherd for himself, for new thoughts, for his feelings and his behaviour. This is what Christ preached two thousand years ago, and this can be applied to-day in both parts of our lives and in life as a whole.